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@pleasedontbelong, I think that is a good point, but in English, "Which one is your favorite color" is generally used only when there are certain colors in mind. (Or at least, this is how it feels to me.) For example, "Among red, green, and blue, which one is your favorite color?"
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Alan CNov 15 '11 at 21:52

4 Answers
4

English

The difference is not very clear and borders on the idiomatic, but I'd say that cuál implies that there is a known set of options from which to choose, while qué is more general. So ¿Cuál libro prefieres? implies that there are a couple of books in front of you and you need to choose from those.

The word que means what, but can also be interposed for which. The first example could easily be expressed as: "de cual libro preferes?" "De que color es su carro?" So both words can be interposed but with delicacy though.

You would though have to examine the subject of the sentence to decide. However generally speaking, Que means what and Cuál means which so you do have to be careful of the sentence structure as the adjective comes before the subject in Spanish as opposed to the opposite in sentence structure in English where the noun precedes the adjective, verb, or adverb.

Sentence structure in Spanish generally is inverse to English so you first have to determine the nature of both the object and the subject of the sentence conjunctively in order to facilitate proper placement of complementary words which must be placed first in Spanish in order to either provide direction, or description. So, have at it and don't forget to think it out, before you whip it out.